small Albino cory acting strange

I have a 29 gallon lightly planted tank with a few corys and livebearers and about a month ago my brother gave me a small Albino cory that he could no longer care for. When I got the cory he was about an inch long and missing his barbels. Lately when I watch my fish I will see him struggling to swim and he seems so weak compared to my other corys. He rarely eats and it seems like he is slowly turning a clearish color. I've been treating my tank with Melafix for the past 4 days to see if there was any improvement but he does not seem to be getting better. Today I noticed him coming up to the surface for a gasp of air(which I know is normal for corys) but when he tried to swim back down he could barely make it halfway down my tank without hovering in one spot and really struggling to swim. None of my other fish are affected like this in any way. I'm not really sure what's wrong with him or if I can do anything to help him. I had my water tested at my LFS yesterday and they said there was 0 Ammonia, 0 nitrites, and 2.5 nitrates. They said my PH and everything else looked perfect. Does any one know what I could do to help this cory? Thank you

I tried feeding him deshelled peas to see if it might be something with his swim bladder but he won't touch them.

Frozen daphnia would be better for cories with potential digestion issues.

He may just be really small still and need time to grow bigger to deal with the filter current. One of mine who was super tiny at first got blown around by the current until he grew larger.

Keep water changes very frequent to help heal the barbels. Vacuum your gravel/sand very, very, very thoroughly to keep bacteria down, and with clean water and diligent care, he should bounce back. He looks okay other than his barbels. Hes not too thin. Just looks small and probably unbalanced.

Thank you. I will try the frozen Daphnia.

I moved him to a quarentine tank with very light current and he ate some of the pea and a little bit of Daphnia but he's now floating upside down to the top of the tank and trying to turn himself over to swim back down but he can't. Is there anything I could possibly do for him other than the peas and Daphnia? Thank you again

That i am unsure off. He doesnt seem bloated at all.

How did you acclimatize him?

NCaquatics said:

That i am unsure off. He doesnt seem bloated at all.

How did you acclimatize him?

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I put him in a bag with his old tank water and floated the bag in my tank for about 15 minutes, added a small amount of my tank water to the bag, repeated this 3 times in intervals of 15 minutes, and the netted him out of the bag and placed him in my tank. He was fine for a little less than a month until the past few days.

Do not use medications like Melafix. Cories are very sensitive to any chemical or other substance in the water. A lot of fish are actually, but cories in particular.

Diagnosing fish disease/problems is complex and I will not guess as to issues here. But clean water (water changes often solve problems and they do help always be ridding the water of various substasnces) is about all you can do. Barbel loss indicates an obvious problem though it can be one of a few, and the gills do seem red in the first photo.

corylover5 said:

I put him in a bag with his old tank water and floated the bag in my tank for about 15 minutes, added a small amount of my tank water to the bag, repeated this 3 times in intervals of 15 minutes, and the netted him out of the bag and placed him in my tank. He was fine for a little less than a month until the past few days.

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Good process.

I will stop using Melafix in my tank. Thank you

Sadly the little guy just passed away. R.I.P little friend

corylover5 said:

Sadly the little guy just passed away. R.I.P little friend

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I’m sorry for your loss... don’t be dissuaded from having cories as they are so cool. The last time I saw one of my cories upside down it was an issue with the oxygen levels in the tank. I quickly pumped up the air stone and took some water out of the tank so the filter would disrupt the surface more, he eventually flipped over. Cories need lots of dissolved oxygen in the water. From the sounds of it you might not have had strong enough filtration in your sick tank.

I have an air stone that is always turned up on max and my tank water is always a few inches low for surface agitation. Would a second air stone help?

The sick tank I put him in was a 2 gallon bucket that had 2 small air stones. I was not going to keep him in the bucket for more than a few hours I only put him there so he could eat the pea and daphnia before my other fish ate it.

Now that the fish has died, it is worth making some basic observations for going forward.

First, it is generally safer to leave the fish in the main tank rather than moving it to a separate quarantine/hospital tank. The reason is that netting a fish out of a tank into another invokes the highest form of stress, that of the fish attempting to avoid a predator. This is why even near-death fish will usually valiantly struggle to avoid being caught, it is a natural instinct that is #1 for the fish, to avoid predation.

There is one obvious exception to the above, and that is if you can diagnose with all reasonable assurance that the fish has "x" disease/problem and removing it to quarantine is beneficial. This is not easy to determine, and in my 30 years I have only once moved a fish to a hospital tank for treatment. The disease/problem must be confined to the fish being moved; if it is any form of contagious disease, there is certainly no point in removing the fish as the disease is likely throughout the tank. This depends upon the specific disease, naturally, but there are cases where either leaving it or moving it to QT may be beneficial.

Diagnosing fish disease is very complex. The behaviours mentioned earlier here could be symptoms of several things. Fish can have difficulty swimming normally due to internal protozoan (these are impossible to detect externally), from swim bladder issues caused by genetics or damage when being netted or stress, to something they ate, etc. The air circulation or lack thereof would hardly cause this; if the cory can swim, it will normally breach the surface for air more often if there is any sort of oxygen issue, but that is not usually normal unless something toxic has entered the water (failure to use conditioner, high ammonia/nitrite, toxic substances like soap, etc).